Recently, a paper by Professor Shenbang Qian and his student Linqiao Jiang, “SDSS J001641-000925: the First Stable Red-dwarf Contact Binary with a Close-in Stellar Companion”, was published in ApJL. Their work was the first to discover a stable red dwarf contact binary, and that the binary system has another red dwarf as a companion, i.e. that the binary is in fact a triple system.

Over 80% of all stars in the universe are red dwarfs, yet it was not known whether these objects are capable of forming contact binaries like other stars. SDSS J001641-000925 is a short period eclipsing binary which was first observed in 2011, consisting of two red dwarfs with an orbital period of 4 hours and 46 minutes. Photometric and spectroscopic follow-ups by other authors later confirmed it to be a contact binary. Those authors also mistakenly commented that the system is inherently unstable, and will rapidly merge.

To shed light on the nature of SDSS J001641-000925, Professor Shengbang Qian and his research group observed the system for over 3 years using an international consortium of telescopes, and found that the aforementioned binary system is in fact a stable contact binary. They also found a 0.14 solar mass third body in its vicinity, and speculate that the presence of this third body has profound implications for the formation and evolution of the binary.